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- [00:00]
Madupa Akinola
Hi, I'm Madupa Akinola from TED Business and I'm here to talk about the Financial Times. Every day the world bombards you with endless headlines and noise. What matters most? Facts and context. That's where the Financial Times comes in. With clarity, depth and truly independent reporting, the FT helps you cut through the noise and see what's real and why it matters. Stay informed with the trusted source leaders around the world rely on. Visit FT.comSourceFT to read more and save 40% on a digital FT subscription.
- [00:42]
Peter Frankenpern
Hello and welcome to a new series of Legacy. We've been doing some plotting and scheming, so after 21 series of legacy we thought we might have some fun and widened our lenses a little bit. So I love doing this show but just wonder if we might mix things up.
- [00:58]
Afua Hirsch
AFWA well, we have been talking about people, Peter, and we've been doing four episodes on each person, which has been great. And we know you, our listeners, love it because you've given us gorgeous feedback. But you know, we're always pushing the boundaries. I think that's one of the things you guys love about us. And we thought there are some legacies that are not actually necessarily person related that would also be fascinating to explore.
- [01:27]
Peter Frankenpern
So we thought it might be fun to look at events from the past or ideas or businesses or diseases and to think about their legacies as well as about people. So we're going to try and do a bit of that. We also thought we might try and do the same length episodes, but maybe just one or two about people or places or things rather than a whole set of four because that might also give a bit of zip and also give us a chance to get through a bit more material.
- [01:52]
Afua Hirsch
You mean you're giving us more work to do? Peter no, we've agreed this halfway.
- [01:56]
Peter Frankenpern
It's not me. We're trying to tell our listeners that, you know, it's going to be even more enriching, even more exciting and they'll get even more of you and me.
- [02:04]
Afua Hirsch
We are going to work super hard for you. We've got new ideas, new characters, new phenomena, and because you've sent us so many lovely messages saying how much you love our downloads, we are going to try to do two episodes a week. Nothing if not ambitious.
- [02:21]
Peter Frankenpern
Peter I work two episodes a week to start with and also for subscribers, an extra episode as well. We're also going to try a few other things, like we're going to have a Legacy club so you can listen ad free for a modest subscription. About the Same price as a meal deal, if you're here in the UK for a reasonable amount. And you'll get early releases, extra episodes, you'll go through the back catalog and access to our new exclusive chat community where you can share your thoughts on what we talked about and also maybe suggest some new topics that you'd like to hear about and be part of our Legacy family.
- [02:52]
Afua Hirsch
And when we start to do live shows, which we also plan to do, you'll be the first to get access to tickets. So come and meet us in person and hear us talk about Legacy and ask us questions and have great conversations live and in person.
- [03:06]
Peter Frankenpern
So, Aqua, you want us to be as inclusive and as diverse as possible. So go on, tell us what you've got that's going to compete with Cleopatra or with Napoleon or Marilyn Monroe or Nina Simone.
- [03:19]
Afua Hirsch
You've really set me up there, Peter, haven't you? I can handle it. This is an absolute smasher. It's not even a good joke. Come on, you break it to our listeners what we are going to be talking about today.
- [03:30]
Peter Frankenpern
Okay, so Afra and I, we had long discussions and in fact, I've been obsessed for quite a long time about potatoes. Do you have a favorite potato? Alfalfa, Favourite potato dish?
- [03:44]
Afua Hirsch
So I haven't actually told you this, Peter. I've been saving it for our recording. God, I hate potatoes.
- [03:52]
Peter Frankenpern
You're joking. You're breaking my heart. You're joking.
- [03:54]
Afua Hirsch
I'm not joking. I actually hate. Okay. Hate is a very strong word. I am not a lover of potatoes and it's actually something that I argue with people close to me about. It's one of the few things that some of my best friends have really pulled me up on. They're just like, I just don't believe you. I think they think it's some kind of carb avoidance or, you know, virtuous thing. And it genuinely isn't. There's tons of carbs that I love. Potatoes are just not the one for me. And I have to say, it's very annoying because just because I don't like potatoes, it doesn't mean that if someone orders some fries with, like, Parmesan and truffle that I'm not gonna pinch a few. And then they're always, like, you said, you hate potatoes. I'll eat them if they're there. But I really, really don't get what is special about potatoes. And that is why I'm very excited for this, because as a result of working on this series with you, Peter, I have learned that there is actually a lot about potatoes that I didn't get. And I am truly humbled.
- [04:55]
Peter Frankenpern
And we're not just going to be talking about potatoes and what they taste like, I promise you. Or I like the truffle and parmesan, throwing that one out. But we're going to be talking about the legacy of potatoes and just how important they have been in history. So this is going to be great. I'm going to really enjoy this. You hadn't told me that you don't like potatoes. So sorry. But I think by the end of it, both you and our listeners will find us a special place in the historical canon for thinking about how potatoes have shaped our world around us.
- [05:25]
Afua Hirsch
And you know what, Peter? I do love an underdog and the potato. You know, it's not the most glamorous. It's not pretty to look at. It's pretty plain to taste, my opin. But the humble potato is the root of empire, and that is why it has a big legacy for us to discuss.
- [05:51]
Peter Frankenpern
From original Legacy Productions, I'm Peter Frankenpern.
- [05:54]
Afua Hirsch
I'm Afua Hirsch.
- [05:55]
Peter Frankenpern
And this is Legacy, the show that explores the lives, the events and ideas that have shaped our world and asks whether they have the reputations that they truly deserve.
- [06:14]
Afua Hirsch
This is the humble potato, the root of empires.
- [06:28]
Peter Frankenpern
Okay, Afro, you've already set off our listeners by saying, people, you don't like potatoes. And I. I'm going to be interested to hear whether your view is shared by anybody. I don't know anybody who doesn't like potatoes.
- [06:38]
Afua Hirsch
So you don't have people say. And I'm really surprised. And actually, I think as we go through this legacy, we're going to discover I am not alone.
- [06:44]
Peter Frankenpern
Hang on. So does that mean crisps or chips if you're American?
- [06:48]
Afua Hirsch
I don't, you know, I'll eat them. But I will never choose a crisp as my snack. I will never choose a potato oriented dish. And there are some potato things I find actively offensive. For example, I hate a pie with a potato topping. I just don't get it. If I want a pie, I want it to be pastry, cottage and shepherd.
- [07:09]
Peter Frankenpern
They're not interested.
- [07:10]
Afua Hirsch
I don't like shepherd's pie. I don't like fish pie when it has potato on top. And I'll tell you my biggest food. Beef.
- [07:16]
Peter Frankenpern
Please don't say pickled on your monster much because I don't think we can be friends if you're going to throw crisps under the bus.
- [07:21]
Afua Hirsch
That's such a throwback. I've definitely enjoyed some of those in the 80s. Peter the thing that really gets me is potato in things. So a Cornish pasty with cubes of potato is kind of my personal food. Hell. America, the way they make burritos with the rice and the potato, I just, you know, people make breakfast burritos sound like such a desirable thing and then you get so excited and you go to some kind of greasy food truck with queues around the block and you feel like it's going to be the best breakfast ever and you're just eating bread and rice and potatoes. It's just, it's I guess the equivalent of like an English chip butty. There is nothing worse for me.
- [08:03]
Peter Frankenpern
I have got, we have got our work cut out to try to move on from the, the way that you don't like potatoes. And I do get that the bulking out of stuff is unnecessary, but let's talk about potatoes to start with. Okay. So potatoes are native to the Andean highlands of modern day Peru and northwestern Bolivia. Wild relatives of the potato are present. You could found in this region by at least 20,000 BC based on paleobotanical and pollen evidence. And it's likely that before potatoes were domesticated, early humans in the Andes in South America were gathering and consuming wild potato species, some of which by the way, are toxic. Maybe that's why you don't like them a foe and they require detoxification. You could do that with potatoes through clay or water leaching and you can still find hundreds, thousands of wild specimens in the Andes today.
- [08:52]
Afua Hirsch
I think that's actually one of the things that makes potatoes seem more attractive because when you look at the Andean varieties, and I think in Peru there's a museum of potatoes where they still have. There is around 1500 varieties and they look beautiful. You know, they're purple, pink, orange. There's something about the homogeneity of the kind of potatoes you see in Europe, which are very beige, kind of similar looking. And actually original wild potatoes were quite stunning and diverse to look at. And it's not just for esthetics. I mean, they really are a kind of nutritional phenomenon, aren't they? And that's why in the central Andes, these ancient civilizations and cultures really invested in cultivating and domesticating potatoes at that.
- [09:40]
Peter Frankenpern
Domestication starts about 8,000, 7,000 or so BCE and it's one of the earliest cultivated crops in the Andes. And that the process of managing to make potatoes part of staple diets included selecting less bitter and more productive tubers from wild Populations because the wild ancestors of the potato were, they were small, they were bitter, they were toxic, they're carefully selected to get lower glycoalkaloid levels that make them more edible and more nutritious. And that's important because the potato has one of the highest levels of, of genetic diversity amongst crops, because the number of wild relatives. And so there are lots of different varieties depending on the climate, the elevation and how they're being used. But the potatoes is central to South American diets.
- [10:22]
Afua Hirsch
I think it's important to think a little bit about how these cultures stored and cultivated Nate potatoes because it speaks to the sophistication of their civilizations. I mean, excavations for example, in the Casma Valley in Peru have revealed storage pits, irrigation channels, terraced fields. This was actually a sophisticated agricultural based economy that was in many ways quite dependent on potato to create a surplus. And because as you said, Peter, you know, eating potatoes is not simple. There are certain ways they have to be cooked or prepared to make them safe to eat because of their affinity for toxins. So they've also found remains of the different cooking techniques, charred potato skins, hearths, storage areas and even religious rituals. Because I suppose, not surprisingly, when something is such an important part of the diet in a culture, it also becomes linked to religious beliefs, rights. You know, just think about the type of harvest festivals that exist in cultures all over the world. There's always this Thanksgiving, this understanding of the importance of a staple crop to the sustainability of the culture.
- [11:33]
Peter Frankenpern
Also because if you produce surplus, you know, if you've got more than you need, then you quite often hierarchies will develop, social and political and religious because if you've got what you want, then how those gains get distributed are really important. So those storage pits you mentioned are key because they stop potatoes from rotting, they keep pests away, and also seasonal shortages. You don't have to worry so much in the winter months if you're, you know, you've got enough food to go for. So food we know correlates quite closely with stratified societies. It helps support people living more closely together because you can have higher levels of density and they're incredibly important in this kind of initial period of Andean cultures. I've spent some time when I got obsessed by the potatoes, I spent some time in South America getting to understand the soil structure, soil chemistry in the Andes and go to see what these communities look like, what the different kind of potatoes. My favorite one is a potato called the daughter in law's nightmare. So when you, when you bring a, you know, your wife into the family. It's got impossible curves to try to peel. You know, it's very bulbous and, you know, you've got to be able to peel it in a way that uses the least amount of waste possible to prove that you're worthy and so on.
- [12:42]
Afua Hirsch
So I just love that name because in that name it just shows how a food like a potato reveals so much about gender roles, about culture, about food, food attitudes. But I've got to just interrupt because you really got me there with your obsession about the potato. So I'm just curious, Peter, how did you come to be so interested in the potato and how has it linked with your work?
- [13:10]
Peter Frankenpern
Well, I was, I'm interested in, I mean, I've written about the environment and climate change for a book I wrote a couple years ago called the Earth Transformed. And trying to think about food systems, calories, water supply and fragilities. You know, if you have too much or enough to go around, then societies maybe function slightly differently to, if you're having to expand, to be able to feed people, also to be able to reward societies. And because I never really worked on Andean cultures before or on Central America either, actually, you know, I spend a lot of time trying to understand the different peoples, how their societies have developed and the ways in which they are similar. And there are lots of quite interesting parallels between connections and trade in the Andes, in Central America, with the Silk Road connections that crisscross Asia. So it was quite an ambitious project to look at. But, you know, it's fun to see how much you can learn if you don't just always stay in your own lane. So I spent quite a lot of time working on these different cultures. And the potato keeps propping up again and again because you're trying to think about how people can survive in the first instance. So those terraces, storage pits, how societies actually work, potatoes fit into all of that quite well.
- [14:16]
Afua Hirsch
And sorry to bring it back to a bit of a basic level, but I'm very curious as to whether you had any potato oriented highlights, culinary highlights, when you were on these travels. Did you eat any potato dishes that could win a potato skeptic like me over to the potato? Because I feel like if anyone's got a chance of really doing justice to the potato, it's going to be these Andean cultures that have had them for like 20,000 years, I think.
- [14:40]
Peter Frankenpern
What do you realize when you, when you travel? I mean, whatever, wherever you go, food tastes different, you know, and it tastes different because of the humidity, the soil conditions, how things are cooked, the water that's cooked in and so that range of tastes, you know, no two days are the same. So the different kinds of potatoes, it's a kind of growing up in the uk, you know, it's King Edward baked potato or, you know, that's about it. There's a sort of small range, but in the Andes it's like being given thousands to choose from. You don't know where to start. So it's like looking at a wine list. You kind of assume that things are more expensive, must be better because they're more valued. But you know, in fact it's all to do with local customs, local tastes too. But yeah, so I love my potatoes, but the bit I want to keep coming back to is that these things are also important for human society and human development.
- [15:24]
Afua Hirsch
So the thing that really helped me understand potatoes, if not love to eat them personally, is about the way they grow. And you'll forgive me Peter, because you've studied potatoes and been to South America and investigated them. But this was the missing piece of the puzzle for me that made it all make sense that if you think about other grains that are, you know, essential sources of carbohydrates and calories, when they grow above the ground, if you think about a head of wheat or a rice plant, if they grow too big, the plant will keel over because of gravity and because they're top heavy and it will die and not be edible. And the thing about potatoes and tubers that grow underground is it unlocks the potential for so much larger plants. They can grow to these huge sizes. I mean, in 2008, a Lebanese farmer dug up a potato that weighed nearly 25 pounds. It was bigger than his head. These things can be huge. And as a result it means that for the same amount of land you are cultivating a crop that can be so much more productive, it can feed so many more people with one plant. And that was the key thing about potatoes, right? That they are a very effective source of providing calories with relatively low intensity harvest.
- [16:42]
Peter Frankenpern
And we're going to talk about that. I mean, in fact, they drive urbanization in the so called old world. They help change how cities grow, they help change how the roles that women play. I mean, they are so hugely important. But I mean, just as sort of as a quick. For those who haven't grown potatoes, which they're not hard to grow, like you mentioned, they're very low input. You typically grow potato by planting a seed with a tuber with at least one eye or a bud that will then sprout into leafy stems above the ground. While the root and the potatoes or the tubers grow underground, those leaves will capture sunlight and the plant sends energy down into the potatoes underneath. And you could basically come back at harvest time and just pick them up. But therefore they're quite similar to quite a few other plants, ironically, quite a few that come from the Americas too, like tomatoes. And they're part of the nightshade family. And I know that you, you might not be keen on potatoes, but you're keen on nightshades, right?
- [17:35]
Afua Hirsch
Well, it's really interesting because, you know, I have Ghanaian heritage and actually a lot of the foods that are staple parts of the West African diet are nightshades, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, you know, capiscum, bell peppers. These are all like, you would think, very indigenous parts of the West African diet. And actually they're all part of this story of globalization in the era of colonization that came from South America. And how I personally learned about this and the nightshade family is that a friend of mine started to develop really serious inflammatory problems. And after investigating the kind of causes of these almost allergic reaction she was having, it was narrowed down to nightshades. And actually I learned through that that nightshades can be quite problematic for some people to digest, that they, they're actually a big culprit in causing digestive and inflammatory issues. And she was able to solve her problems by just cutting out nightshades. And what I found interesting about that was that actually she's someone with African heritage. All the things she had to cut out were things that were actually not indigenous to her ancestors diet. And when she reverted to the plants that her ancestors would have eaten before this era of importing different crops, she was fine. And I think, you know, I'm not saying we should all revert to what our ancient ancestors ate, but it's interesting that sometimes these things that we think are traditional parts of our diet, actually we may not have evolved to be able to digest them. And a lot of people have problems with nightshades. And until that happened, I didn't even know that tomatoes, potatoes, aubergines and peppers were part of this, the same family. I mean, it's not that obvious. Looking at them, they seem like very different looking and tasting plants, but they all have this kind of linked origin, don't they, Peter?
- [19:19]
Peter Frankenpern
Well, part of the problem is that we leave that for biology lessons at school, where there are quite a lot of other things to talk about. But These are all incredibly important parts of history. And because history tends to be about humans, you know, it doesn't really tend to be about what we eat, where foods come from. But you know, things like manioc, cassava and so on are, can be toxic, they can be very dangerous. And so if you've got dispositions against them, you know, maybe one of the reasons you don't like potatoes Afro is not just that you're not mad on pies with potato toppings, but because in fact, you know, you're more sensitive to these kinds of foods. But the reason why they're so important in the Andes is because the Andes have very strong swings of temperatures, sometimes within the same day, extreme heat and extreme cold. So the ways in which potatoes and different kinds of potatoes are grown to, to provide resilience to food shocks and to tricky seasons or whatever are really important. The UV light in the Andes obviously is ideal for potatoes too. So you get crop diversity, you get resilience, you get food securities, and you get a chance to think about how communities in the past have managed to solve their challenges that they deal with. And food is obviously a really important one. And you know, because I've worked on climatic change, you find lots of periods where there are sudden shifts and sudden, I don't mean like month to month, but over the course of a decade or two, you can find very dramatic switches. So for example, about the year 800 or so, you get the steep forested slopes of mid elevation Andes with very high levels of unusual rainfall, and the conditions become so wet that different crops get completely abandoned in favor of potatoes and squash and beans. So maize, for example, just disappears. So the ways in which societies have responded to climatic change, to new organization, to the ability to feed themselves is a really important part of thinking about history as well.
- [21:06]
Afua Hirsch
I think it's really important to think about, as you explained it and as you write about in the Earth transform the climactic and physical conditions of the Andes, where the potato comes from. And one of the things that really stands out for me is the diversity of the crop. And that's going to become really important when we talk about what happened to the potato later when it became a staple in Europe. Because the way that potato has been consumed in European societies is very different from this, you know, incredibly rich topography in the Andes where you would go from village to village and from valley to valley and find completely different crops, completely different varieties of potatoes, you know, even in quite close proximity to each other. And there's obviously a resilience to that because if one crop fails due to pests or climate, others are going to survive. And you know, as we know, biodiversity is, is a very important source of anti fragility in our natural world. So you know, you can kind of imagine this, it's a very specific place, the Andes. You've got cool climates, strong UV light, hugely high altitudes, you know, some of the highest altitudes on earth, the volcanic and alluvial soils and people who have evolved to really thrive in those conditions. And so the potato is a product of that environment too. And it's going to be such a huge part of the story to understand how that dynamic changes. When it comes to a very, very different climactic but also social environment like.
- [22:33]
Peter Frankenpern
Europe, there are obvious differences. So in Europe, where monoculture, heavier reliance on wheat and grain, it means if there's a failed harvest, you get famine that happens regularly. You don't have similar processes to chunio, which is a kind of process of freeze drying. So it means that the ways in which society reacts, the pressures they deal with, the ways that hierarchies emerge, the way people eat is central to all of that story and why that's important. As you said AFU is when the potato gets introduced to Europe, it drives huge change. So at the moment of contact, when Europeans first arrive in South America, the Inca, who are the sort of most important imperial sort of dynasty who've taken over vast amounts of South America, Andean societies, they built a really large calorie secure civilization in the Andes without relying on wheat or rice or domesticated cattle that you find in Europe, Africa and Asia. And instead they rely on highly adapted, nutritionally rich and culturally embedded potato based systems. And in much of Europe, although it's agriculturally advanced in lots of different ways, is very vulnerable to crop failures and to micronutrient deficiencies. So when we come back, we have a look at how the potato changed European and in fact Asian and African diets, societies and cultures in ways that are breathtaking when you start to dig into them.
- [24:01]
Derek Clason
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- [25:02]
Peter Frankenpern
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- [25:22]
Derek Clason
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- [25:24]
Peter Frankenpern
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- [25:41]
Afua Hirsch
So, Peter Colonization, the root of all evil. I mean, that's a bit.
- [25:47]
Peter Frankenpern
I like what you did. I like what you did there.
- [25:49]
Afua Hirsch
Yeah. Do you can see what I did with the root? The root of all evil. The Spanish were the ones to bring the potato, which they discovered in Peru. I say discovered. That's the typical language of colonization, isn't it?
- [26:02]
Peter Frankenpern
I didn't say it. I didn't say that.
- [26:04]
Afua Hirsch
No, I did. And as we've just said, the societies where they found them have been living with potato for about 20 millennia. But it was a new thing to the Spanish, and they immediately brought it back with them, probably via the Canary Islands, we think, Right?
- [26:19]
Peter Frankenpern
That's right. And when people travel, whether it's for, in this particular case, conquest or whatever reasons, they're interested to see how other people live. So quite early on, you find Spanish chroniclers writing about indigenous societies and about how they live. And we have, in the 1550s, for example, a guy called Pedro Ciesa de Leon writing about what he says is another route that's cultivated by the Indians, which they call the locals, which they call papas. It is round with a rough coat, and it grows underground. They eat it boiled and roasted, and it's their daily sustenance. And to start with, the Spanish are not particularly interested in working out whether it tastes good or whether they should cultivate themselves. It's a Sort of curiosity for elites. It's brought back to botanical gardens. The first reference we have in Europe is in seville in the 1570s. It's grown as an exotic plant, but lots of Spanish visitors are interested in sort of ethnographies, but also writing about the flora and fauna, partly because that's what you do if you're interested in studying the past. So there's a lot of curiosity in what it is that the populations of South America are eating, aren't there? Isn't it?
- [27:27]
Afua Hirsch
Yeah. And it's not necessarily innocent curiosity. I mean, you know, as anyone who studies colonialism, you'll see that these European colonizers often described the indigenous people they encountered in similar terms to the flora and fauna they found and kind of documented it all, like these curious, exotic natural phenomena. And you get this really uncomfortable, you know, if you read any books about botany, the way it's kind of interlinked with indigenous practices and traditional cultures, it's all kind of looked at through this gaze of strange practice that's kind of linked to the primitive. But the one thing that they were really interested in documenting were plants and food sources. And the potato did capture the Spanish imagination. And as you said, Peter, you know, this is a context in Europe where famine is a part of life. You know, many urban centers had relatively secure, organized food systems. But in rural areas throughout Europe, every few years, there were famines. We don't even really know the true number of how many millions were regularly dying from famine, because it often, you know, was only properly documented when they were on a large scale. But local famines, food insecurity. And so people who were exploring the New World from a European perspective were interested in what they could get that would strengthen their own countries, that would allow them to compete with their European rivals to conquer more of the world. And now that might sound like a big story, but food sources like the potato are absolutely central to understanding that.
- [28:56]
Peter Frankenpern
At the end of the 1500s, you know, the era of Sir Francis Drake or even Shakespeare, you know, lots of Shakespeare's plays have weird celestial events. You know, we have things like the Winter's Tale. The anxiety about changing climates is linked to the fact that in this particular window between 1590 and 1610, it's some of the coldest years in northern Europe for five or six hundred years, partly connected to volcanic eruptions all over the world. So that idea about not just famine, but exactly as you mentioned, for just food insecurity, inability to be able to afford things, it means that there starts to be More and more interest. A combination of more people traveling, exploring, as they'd call it, goods coming back from abroad, and a lot of interest in what it is that people are doing to cope with shock. So, for example, we have English herbalists saying that potatoes in the Andes are a food for pleasure rather than for nourishment. They loosen the belly and they cause wind, which, you know, you can't ever.
- [29:50]
Afua Hirsch
Get away as well from the kind of class snobbery inherent in, you know, these people who were traveling were tended to be. Or the ones documenting their new discoveries tended to be members of the elite. So you get all this kind of quite dismissive class narrative in there, along with the curiosity about the potato. So this idea that John Gerrard said, you know, the root is not so good to eat as either the skirret or the parsnip. What is a skirt? Peter, do you know what a skirt is?
- [30:18]
Peter Frankenpern
I don't know. I don't know what it is.
- [30:20]
Afua Hirsch
Maybe one of our listeners can help us decode the meaning of a skirt. But John Gerrard said the root is not so good to eat as either the skirret or the parsnip being a food for the poorer sort who have little else to sustain them. Potatoes are food for pleasure rather than nourishment, loosening the belly and causing wind. Said by an English herbalist. I mean, I actually have to say that's closer to my analysis of the experience of eating the potato. But, you know, I'm not judging for the potato files among you, but it does change, Right?
- [30:51]
Peter Frankenpern
So they're originally seen as the food of other people who are not as sophisticated or developed as Europeans. But by the 1620s, we find potatoes in places like Switzerland and in the Rhine. They've already reached Italy by that point. We find in the middle of the 1600s, a slight switch of how English writers are describing potatoes. So we got Sir Kenelm Digby saying, the potato boiled with milk and a little spice. That's your potatoes with Parmesan and truffles. Afwa. Yeah.
- [31:21]
Afua Hirsch
I'm not sure this is Parmesan and truffle we're talking about here, but it's.
- [31:25]
Peter Frankenpern
A helpful and agreeable dish served commonly at sea and in country houses. And the great diarist John evening by the end of the century, saying the potato is of good use, being both nourishing and wholesome, and might well serve for the table of the poor. There's an awareness that this food is a kind of miracle food in lots of different kinds of ways. It Takes a while for it to catch on. But there is the way in which the diffusion of crops is a really important part of the so called Colombian exchange. The way that the exploration of new worlds isn't just bringing back gold and metal and silver and things like that. It's also redistributing crops all around the world to the point that, you know, you mentioned tomatoes and staple diets in West Africa. You know, when you mention the tomato, you think it must be Spanish or Italian. When you think of chilies, probably must be Indian, peanuts, probably from Southeast Asia, pineapples, you know, these are all coming from South America and they often pass through the annals of history in silence. But there are some fantastic historians who do pick up on it, you know, Alfred Crosby and so on. But, you know, it's really important to think about what it is that is being spread by people when they move and travel. And the potato is, is a key crop that changes societies.
- [32:33]
Afua Hirsch
Maybe another time we can do an episode on cocoa because that, you know, as someone loves. Ghana is the key export crop from Ghana. I mean, at one point Ghana was practically a mono economy based on cocoa exports, but it's not, not indigenous. In fact, it was only introduced right at the end of the 19th century, also from south and Central America. I also just want to do a quick divergence because Dan, our lovely producer, has just informed us that the skirt cum cisarum is a perennial root vegetable with a sweet parsnip like flavour, popular before the potato and is known for its slender white roots. Ooh, I bought some of those from the market the other day. Are they like white carrots? They kind of like a parsnip, but they love them.
- [33:14]
Peter Frankenpern
Oh, those guys. Yeah, I know those carrots.
- [33:16]
Afua Hirsch
You learn something every day. Thank you, Dan.
- [33:19]
Peter Frankenpern
Afra, tell me though, tell me that not everybody's happy about the potato. There's lots of suspicions, partly because it's from a place far away, but also because of what it looks like, how it grows and because it's something new. Tell us about some of the ways in which potatoes seen as being deviant and dangerous.
- [33:33]
Afua Hirsch
They say the devil plants potatoes for they grow in the dark and fatten the poor without grace.
- [33:40]
Peter Frankenpern
Wow.
- [33:40]
Afua Hirsch
I kind of love that quote reported by Parmentier, who we will get to compiled from peasant sayings in Limousin and Lorraine. And I should add that the French, it's very French, were the snootiest about this new food. I mean, initially, at one point, potatoes were actually banned in France. They were so Offended, perhaps, because they are not amazing to taste. But anyway, I'm not going to keep reigniting that. I'm going to get loads of furious comments if I. Yeah, because it's not just.
- [34:06]
Peter Frankenpern
It's not just a French Afro. You've got Protestants, for some reason, Protestants who take the Bible very literally in Germany or Prussia and Saxony saying these roots are not mentioned in Holy Scripture and therefore may not be fit for Christians to eat. Well, you've got the Scots, Scottish Presbyterians saying it's not meat, it's not okay to consume what is not blessed in the Scriptures nor named in the law of Moses. So, you know, you've got lots of people saying that this food is kind of dangerous. Maybe it's because of the wind element. Again, but in Central Europe, in Bohemia, a church notice that says, as this plant is not of our lands nor of the Gospel, we urge caution until more have known of its effects. So, you know, there's something in this, that things that are new are suspicious.
- [34:52]
Afua Hirsch
Imagine what life would be like if you only ate the foods specifically named in the Bible. I mean, the protein smoothie I had for breakfast would be a total no.
- [35:00]
Peter Frankenpern
I saw it in the book of Deuteronomy. I have to go back and check.
- [35:04]
Afua Hirsch
Not as far as I know. Maybe in Revelations.
- [35:06]
Peter Frankenpern
Chia seed.
- [35:08]
Afua Hirsch
I'm more aligned with Dennis Diderot, who was a philosopher in the 1750s and wrote Roots. No matter how you prepare it, the root is tasteless and starchy. It cannot be regarded as an enjoyable food, but it provides abundant, reasonably healthy food for men who want nothing but sustenance. It's windy, as in it causes gas. But he said, what is windiness to the strong bodies of peasants and labourers?
- [35:37]
Peter Frankenpern
You're on side with that.
- [35:38]
Afua Hirsch
I mean, I would never recommend that anybody should eat something they think is tasteless and causes wind. But again, it's so interesting that you can never separate the kind of taste element, the religious element, the scientific suspicion from this kind of class commentary, you know, and this idea that upper class people should be having pleasant culinary experiences, but for the poor it's just a question of filling their bellies and, you know, letting them fart in the fields or whatever they need to do. It's really, it's quite interesting to read their perspective. But, you know, on one level, I think there is some wisdom in some of this commentary. This, not the suspicion, but the idea that, look, this is not something we know about, it's not something that's indigenous to this part of the world. Maybe we should be a little cautious before we make the majority of our population completely dependent on it. And you know, they might have got the reasons for that skepticism wrong. It was not named in the Bible or you know, it comes from the dark. The reason they should have been skeptical was that they didn't have a history in Europe of how to cultivate the potato and how to protect it from disease and how to make sure the population wasn't over dependent on it. And these are all things that came back to bite Europe in the ass later on. So, you know, in some of this early caution there are some, some seeds of, of sense.
- [36:58]
Peter Frankenpern
Let me give you now a shout out for why the potato has been badly judged by people, including all these ones we just talked about, and possibly even by the ones who more focused on the farting and the fact that it's not mentioned in the Bible. So the potato provides more calories, more vitamins and more nutrients per acre of land than any other staple crop. Not only is it miraculous in terms of its food content, a medium sized potato skin contains 45% of the daily recommended intake of vitamin C. Unlike things like wheat or oats, rice, which has none, a medium potato can provide significant amounts of the daily recommended intake of vitamin B6 as well as thiamine, riboflavor, niacin, magnesium, et cetera. They need less land and they yield over 10 times more calories than other crops. So potatoes, and not just that, they can grow on land that isn't suitable for the cultivation of wheat or rice. So the potato is a kind of jackpot nutrient. It's not just fills you up and makes you, gives you wind, which is news to me. I'm going to have to make sure that I monitor that one in my household. But it's fantastically rich in helping human health, full stop. It's good in poor weather conditions, it provides diversification against famine, it's easy to store. And also aufwer, the potato is great because it helps with animals too. Why is that?
- [38:19]
Afua Hirsch
Yes, it's not just peasants eating potatoes in this worldview, it's also livestock. And actually it's a serious asset to rural societies that you can feed animals, pigs and cattle, potatoes. And this is able to not only keep farmed animals fed, but it's actually able to increase the supply of meat and widening opportunities for meat consumption. And as we know, we've talked about this before, I think industrialization is linked to the ability of a growing middle class to be able to consume more protein, which is something that was Incredibly scarce in the past. And then on top of that, with more animal production, you've got more manure, which then in turn helps further crop production. So we're just seeing a cycle now where the food supply is being increased quite a rapid pace in Europe.
- [39:11]
Peter Frankenpern
And what's interesting is that, you know, you get lots of people complaining about, you know, in Russia, people are convinced that the potato is the forbidden fruit that Adam and Eve had eaten. You know, probably because it's called the pomme de terre or, you know, the apple of the earth in French. And traditioners say whoever eats potatoes, disobeying God and it violates the Holy Testament. But economists are quite quick to understand that this is transformational. So Adam Smith in the wealth of nations, the great Scottish economist and thinker, says that the food produced by a field of potatoes is much superior to what's produced by a field of wheat. And he's convinced this is a quote, no food can afford a more decisive proof of its nourishing quality or of its being particularly suitable to the health of human consumption. And that the strongest men in London and the most beautiful women in the Dominions are those who'd come from the lowest ranks of people in Ireland who'd been fed with this root. So there's an idea that potatoes are doing something to increase human health, to increase longevity, to help with some of the flows about economic stress. So we can look at military records of tens of thousands of French soldiers between about 1650 and 100 years later. And the adult height goes up by more than a centimeter because of the nutritional investments made by potatoes. So there's an idea and there's a realization that maybe the world in Europe is going to change because some of the things that people were worrying about is going to shift. And the ways in which people can live is starting to change too. And there's some really exciting recent work done about how potatoes help reduce the risks of war in Europe. Because if land becomes less valuable because you can grow crops and you can feed yourselves, then you don't need to go and invade your next door neighbor, or you invade them for different reasons. You're not just trying to take land off them. So there are lots of ideas about how this changes the dynamics in Europe and then the southern part of China and the northern part of China, about reductions of peasant rebellions, which are typically about people not having enough food. So it's incredibly exciting to see how the potato changes early modern Europe and beyond.
- [41:09]
Afua Hirsch
I'm not sure if there's Specific data about this, but I suspect if it reduced war in Europe, it helped radically increase it elsewhere in the world because stronger, better fed armies are now able to go and invade larger parts of the rest of the world for European empires. But I also take the point. I think it's so interesting. It's kind of socially disruptive within Europe because we're coming out of an era where the class system was so physically manifested in people's bodies. You know, the rich who could afford protein and carbohydrates were taller and healthier. And you know, if you were poor, you were living often with food insecurity and not well nourished. So this idea of the potato now making the kind of rural poor from Ireland look as handsome and well developed as the rich in London is quite a disruptive idea. And maybe the beginning of the end of an era where the relationship between social class and income was so directly visible in somebody's physical appearance.
- [42:09]
Peter Frankenpern
But it drives population increases. We know that infant mortality and life expectancies are quite closely linked to food supply and that calorie density and the reliability of potatoes help support rapid population increases. So between 1750 and 1850, Britain's population nearly trebles, Ireland's nearly doubles. And of course that's to do also with advances in medicine and so on. But it's also to do with the fact that there's more to go around. Naples triples in size. Paris goes from about 100,000 to about 600,000 over the course of about a couple of hundred years. And it's partly because if you have guaranteed food supplies and there's less pressure on the land, you don't need so many people working to bring harvests in. Potatoes are easy to collect, so it means that labor can be redistributed. And so cities become the kind of the key part of consumption and the key part of the ways in which Europe starts to change. From about 1700 onwards. It's very closely linked to potatoes, but doesn't mean cities are great places to live. Right.
- [43:12]
Afua Hirsch
It's a bit of a mixed blessing because Europe cities at this point are not necessarily desirable places to be. Think about Rousseau talking about Paris in 1742, saying, I expected a city as beautiful as it was grand. Instead, narrow, dirty and foul smelling streets, villainous black houses, beggars, poverty, wagon drivers, Mendes, Vol. Garments or Voltaire on Paris in 1749. The center of the city is dark, cramped, hideous, something from the time of the most shameful barbarism. It's almost as if These cities are actually growing at a rate that they can't cope with. They're not able to expand resources and infrastructure to absorb the rapid increase in population. And we all know what that looks like when a city grows too fast and isn't prepared for the sewage and the housing and the transport and the commerce. You just get this kind of urban filth. And it's very visceral, the way visitors to Paris describe it in this era.
- [44:13]
Peter Frankenpern
Yeah, when you've got a British. British visitor, Anonymous, who visits Paris in the 17th century, and he says Paris is always dirty, and by perpetual motion, dirt is beaten into such thick, black, unctuous oil that no art can wash it off. Which is not what Paris is like today, by the way. But, you know, for those early industrial cities, potatoes is a central dietary crop. It's cheap, it's storable, it's filling, and like we said, it contains amino acids, essentially, amino acids, vitamin C and so on. So it helps literally put the muscles on the work that's going into creating these new cities. And in fact, what's really interesting is that the places that adopt the potato early, like Flanders or Ireland or England or parts of Germany, see faster rates of urbanization from about 1750 onwards. And like I said, because potatoes require less labor to harvest, more family members, and particularly women and children actually can enter textile mills and factories, the gender roles start to change around this time, too, don't they?
- [45:12]
Afua Hirsch
I think it's a bit of a stretch to credit the potato with feminism, but everything we've talked about, malnutrition, famine, the hardship of feeding families, especially, you know, those on lower income, those lower down the socioeconomic scale. We know these burdens always fall disproportionately on women. Women are the ones doing the domestic labor. It's girls who are less privileged within families, who will be less prioritized with whatever scarce resources they are. So it's not a coincidence that around this period we start seeing more of an abundance of food and calorie supply, that women also start to be bolder in their demands and think with more clarity and audacity about what equality and freedom would look like. You know, we get Mary Astel in 1694 saying, if men are born free, why are all women born slaves? And of course, a century after that, now the potato is really starting to take hold in Europe. Mary Wollstonecraft on the education of daughters. Women should not squander on fashion. What might alleviate the distress of many poor families and soften the heart of the girl. So you've got to look at all these things in the round that were happening at the same time. This urbanization, this improvement in the sources of food and food security, the shift in gender roles and these early demands that society could become restructured in a way that doesn't place all, all of the hardest burdens on women.
- [46:42]
Peter Frankenpern
So look, Afwa, I know you're not a potato fan, right? But so far we've looked at how potatoes are a huge part, hugely important part of Andean societies and how they develop in different ways to other parts of the world, how important they are in the roles of colonization, the extraction of foods as part of a diffusion of goods, ideas and crops. Of course, because of the crossing of the Atlantic, we've seen how they drive average heights, how they change generals, how they evolved in poverty alleviation, reduction of food stress, drive, urbanization. But the story of the potato, which we're going to look at next time, it's not finished with that because all those things we mentioned have got legacies that span for centuries. But this is only part of the story of the Hubble potato.
- [47:27]
Afua Hirsch
There is more to come. And this time the story is not just about how this incredible vegetable brought benefit, benefits and opportunity, but about how it brought disaster. That's next time on Legacy.
- [47:53]
Marc Maron
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